American Goth (17 page)

I gasped for air beneath her as she held me closely, and it took every bit of strength I had left to reach for her hand, to entwine her fingers with mine as she slid along my back and we lay there, curled together as she touched tender lips to my shoulder.

Fire still blazed in my belly, a comfortable pulse of flame that flared every few seconds as she rubbed her face along the sweat slick of my neck and cheek and I turned to face her, entwine my legs with hers.

“I thought…I thought you were upset,” I murmured sleepily as I kissed the warm skin before me.

She released my hand to wrap her arms around me. “I was,” she said as I rested my head against her chest, the beat of her heart steady under my ear, “but it’s my issue, Sammy Blade, not yours. You…” and she kissed my head then pulled the comforter over us, “you can be, you can do whatever you want. We’ll work it out.”

I chuckled lightly, hearing my high school nickname from her lips, because it was ironic, because even though I wasn’t certain what she meant, the familiarity of it was as comforting as the hands that smoothed along my ribs, and I snuggled against her.

As I drifted off to sleep, two thoughts ran through my mind. First, the whole dick thing that had upset her earlier had probably been because she had her own curiosities, things she thought she couldn’t—or shouldn’t—explore. God, even with the normal heightening of sensation, of desire, with the work I did and that I knew she was learning, she had never before been so demanding, so open, either in how we made love or the way she spoke. I didn’t know what surprised me more: that it had happened or that I’d found it so hot. The second thing to run through my mind was a question: What in the world was Elizabeth teaching her?

I must have mumbled the second part aloud, because her voice was low and husky while her fingers traced light patterns across my skin. “You work with the white light—I’m learning what she calls ‘the green ray.’ Today,” she continued, “she taught me the ‘Charge of the Goddess.’
Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals.”

I rubbed my face against her chest and tightened my arms about her, ready to drift once more back to sleep. “Are all the rituals like that?”

She gave a low chuckle. “Only the important ones,” she said as she settled beneath me, then kissed my head once more. “Only the important ones.”

As I walk the trail of life in the fear of the wind and rain,

grant O Great Spirit that I may always walk like a man.

—Cherokee Prayer

If Kenny’s getting the hang of playing his guitar at the same time as he sang could be considered progress, then one could definitely say rehearsals were going well, especially now that we’d evolved from “let’s hang out and have a bit of fun” to “let’s try to play some music.”

But since we were serious, we needed a serious rehearsal space, one that we didn’t have to schedule hours for.

Since it seemed that even with Graham’s constant “I’m just temporary” reminders, we were all more than a bit committed to making something happen, Hannah found a building with a bunch of bedsits—one-room apartments with a kitchenette and a bathroom—that were let for studio space. The landlord had signs posted everywhere that said “no living,” and if we got there by nine-ish or so weekend mornings, we tried to be done by six, so as not to hear that accusation. Our Tuesdays were the same, though, and I usually ate dinner those nights with the band, or grabbed something quick at home before bed.

We celebrated our new space with a switch in caffeine sources, from tea to coffee.

“So,” Hannah drawled as she draped a casual arm across my shoulders, “how far are you
really
getting?”

But the feel of her words wasn’t casual at all, the real meaning behind them as manifest to me as if she’d asked outright, and I could also read from her, whether she knew it or not, that her feelings were very mixed: she liked me, she also found Fran attractive—that I could easily understand—and wasn’t certain what to do with any of it. As much as I sincerely liked Hannah, I was at the moment in no mood to either help or add to her confusion. I had enough of my own.

Making love with Fran had been amazing, gut-stirringly sensual, loving, friendly, fulfilling, but it had raised issues for me.

The new images she’d painted in my mind had so stirred me, played through my body with such a visceral reality that an already incredible and intense experience had been heightened, sharpened—and those images had opened new questions.

No different than most, I supposed, I’d always wondered what it would be like to be a boy; an only child, I’d played with neighborhood kids and grammar school classmates, as well as the children of other firefighters at the family events and barbecues my father had taken me to. There had been occasions, not too many, certainly, but enough for me to remember, where well-meaning moms and dads of other tots and tykes had told me I couldn’t climb a tree, or wrestle with the boys, or do some other activity because I was wearing a skirt, because I was a girl. And girls didn’t do that.

The first time that had happened, I might have been about five or so, but I remembered the day clearly. Bruce and Mario, two of the boys I played with regularly (we didn’t like to play with Mario’s sister, Theresa, because she always wanted to play with her Barbies and after you took their clothes off, then lost their shoes, there was nothing else to do with them besides bend them into crazy inhuman positions or switch their heads around) had brought their knapsacks just like I had.

We’d fill them up as heavy as we could, sling them over a shoulder, and then go climb trees, because we knew firemen had to climb ladders carrying heavy hoses, and one day, that would be us—we wanted to be ready.

“Come here, Samantha,” Bruce’s mom called as she came walking over. “Let me see that pretty dress.”

It was my favorite, a royal blue that my father, my Da, had picked for me because he said it matched my eyes, and it had a bunny with a red baseball cap on his head and a ready-to-swing bat over its shoulder appliquéd to the front. The cap I wore matched the bunny’s and I liked it—a lot.

“But we have to practice,” I protested as she had snatched my resisting body.

“Yeah, practice,” Bruce echoed behind me.

“For the fireman’s test,” another little boy added.

Bruce’s mom laughed. “You and Mario go,” she said to her son. “Samantha needs to sit here and play nice with Theresa. You don’t want to ruin that pretty dress,” she said to me with a smile.

“It washes, my Da said so,” I informed her and turned to run away with the boys—they were gonna get there first!

She reeled me in by my knapsack. “You can’t climb trees with a skirt on,” she told me in no-nonsense tones, “and you’re not going to grow up to be a fireman.” She bodily lifted me and placed me on the bench next to Theresa where she’d spread her dolls out along the table. “Girls can’t be firemen,” she said.

She was wrong, I
knew
she was wrong, and I stared back up at her as I spoke. “I’m gonna be a fireman like my Da.”

The smile fell from her face. “No. You’re not—you
can’t
—you’re a girl. Sit here and learn to play nice.”

Play nice? Play nice? Theresa was
boring
, her dolls were
boring
, and her mother’s words had just ruined my world.

I slid under the table and cried.

“Come out from under there, Samantha,” she cajoled. “Do you want a hot dog?”

Nothing answered her but my sob. “Here, honey, you can have Theresa’s favorite doll,” she offered under the table.

That made me cry harder and just as I drew in enough breath to think, “I want my Da,” he climbed under with me.

“What’s the matter, Sam-Sam?” he asked softly, his head crouched under the table.

I crawled into his lap and snuggled my face into the coal-tar smell of his shirt, staining it with my tears. “Da, I don’t
want
to be a girl,” I cried onto his chest. “I don’t want to play nice, I want to be a boy so I can climb trees and be a fireman.”

Later that night when Da had tucked me into bed and I said my nightly prayers, that woman’s words, the tone and the meaning, echoed through my mind. I didn’t know any other girls like me, I didn’t like
any
girls at all; maybe I wasn’t one. For the first time when I spoke to God, I asked for something new: to wake up the next morning a boy. I would ask this every night for the next eight years, and I never wore that dress again.

The next week, in kindergarten, I cut my own hair with the duck-handled construction paper scissors. My father shook his head at me when he picked me up from the principal’s office, then drove me down to his barber, Moretti’s on the corner of New Dorp Lane and Railroad.

I liked going to Moretti’s with Da, and we went at least once every three weeks. I liked the smell of talc, the bottles of blue water, the striped glass pole by the door and the overstuffed red-brown leather and metal chairs. And then there was Mr. Moretti himself, with his thick jet black hair and even thicker mustache, the soda he always had for me (in a glass bottle with a top he had to open), and the warm, indulgent smile he threw my way while I watched his hands as he worked.

“Logan!” he exclaimed as we walked in, and he slapped the towel he carried over his shoulder. “You’re at least a week early. What are you—oh…” he said as he looked at me. “I think someone needs a seat.”

Da sighed as he patted my shoulder. “Jump up, Sam-Sam,” he said. “Vinny, cut it any way she wants.”

I was thrilled—I wanted it short, really, really short. As Mr. Moretti clipped, trimmed, then buzzed the back of my neck, I felt delight sneak through me like warmth from the sun after a cloudy day. Maybe if I looked like a boy, no one would tell me I couldn’t be a fireman anymore.

“I don’t like girls,” I explained to my Da over my slice of pizza as we drove home. “They like cats—and cats bite and scratch and are sneaky and mean. I like boys, boys like dogs, and dogs are nice.” I’d watched a lot of Disney movies; I knew what I was talking about. “And they play in mud,” I added, “and girls don’t.”

He nodded as he drove. “Well, you know, Sam-Sam, your mommy was a girl, and she wasn’t like that.”

That was a revelation. Mommy was a girl? Mommy was, well,
Mommy
, and while I didn’t remember much, I did remember that she liked to play, that she’d liked to laugh, and that she’d never scolded over dirt.

“Mommy can’t be a girl,” I said finally. “Mommy was nice.”

Bruce and Mario knew the score, though, and because we lived in the same neighborhood, we ignored Bruce’s mom and did whatever we wanted to anyway, from playing soldier in the dunes of the beach a few blocks away, to pick-up games of baseball (softball was for
girls
), or just riding our bikes as fast as we could, everywhere they’d take us. And everyone we met, from the teenagers that drove the ice-cream trucks that trolled our streets, to Old Man Joe who owned the candy shop on the corner, called me Sam. No one questioned whether I was a boy or a girl, and I had too much fun to think about it.

Until I was about ten. Every year, the members of Rescue Five would get a bunch of cabins someplace up in the Pennsylvania Poconos and make the trek, either every weekend or for two weeks or so depending on their schedule, to what we kids simply called Firemen’s Camp.

It was great—we’d run the trails, swim in the lake, boat, fish, and generally get as dirty as we could without any parental supervision so long as everyone made it back on time to the central picnic area for lunch and the nightly barbecues, and me and the boys, we had our routine down pat.

This particular year promised to be no different, and my excitement grew as Da went over the checklist with me before we made the annual pilgrimage.

He laughed when I jumped out of the car on arrival, knowing the first place I’d run to was Mario’s cabin and we’d go together from there to collect Bruce, and then on to Dave’s, who was a little older than all of us, until the four of us were gathered and we’d head down to our favorite spot by the lake.

There was the usual friendly squabbling and shoving, the “you’re such a dickhead” joking around until Dave dropped his pants.

“Yeah? Well, mine’s growing,” he announced, and showed us.

We all stared a moment, then Bruce unzipped and did the same. “Mine looks nicer than yours,” he said. “You’ve got that weird skin thing.”

Mario dropped next. “I don’t have that skin stuff,” he said.

They looked at me expectantly, and I could feel my neck turn as red as my canvas sneakers. We all knew I didn’t have one of those. But if I didn’t do it, I’d be a wuss, a sissy, and couldn’t hang with them, relegated like Tim and couple of others, like the Scanlon kids, to play with Theresa and the other babies. I was one of the guys, so I unzipped my pants. “I don’t have one,” I muttered, the burn in my neck now blazing through my face.

“That’s a pussy,” Dave said, “because you’re a girl.”

I stared at the ground as I redressed. I knew that, but I’d never felt quite so ashamed of it before, or so angry about it, either.

“Hey, maybe Sam’s dick is different, you know? Like eye color or something,” Bruce offered.